With the deadline less than a month away, the Cardinals will have to make some decisions about their plans. If they decide to be buyers, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak expects ownership to support that. “I do think ownership, if they saw we were in a spot and it made sense to do something, I think they’d support it,” Mozeliak tells Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Mozeliak elaborated that he hasn’t done a “deep dive” into how ticket sales and the club’s broadcast deal have impacted things, but he expects ownership to invest in a contending club.
The Cards went into the most recent offseason looking to transition into a new era. The club struggled to compete in 2023 and 2024 and their broadcast revenue was going to drop in 2025. The plan was to shift focus away from investing in the big league roster with a greater priority on development. As part of that shift, this is going to be Mozeliak’s final year in his role, with Chaim Bloom to take over after that. Currently, Bloom is focused on overhauling the club’s player development apparatus.
As part of that transition, it seemed the franchise hoped to cut payroll, but they struggled to do so. Well-paid players like Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras and Miles Mikolas were apparently unwilling to waive their respective no-trade clauses. Nolan Arenado was open to waiving his but blocked a trade to the Astros in the offseason and ultimately ended up staying.
When those efforts to trim the roster and the payroll stalled, the Cardinals essentially pivoted to standing pat. They could have tried trading players without no-trade clauses, such as Erick Fedde or Ryan Helsley, but didn’t seem inclined to. Their investments in the club were modest, to put it mildly. Their $2MM deal for Phil Maton was their biggest expenditure.
They now find themselves in a sort of limbo position, in more ways than one. Not only are they in this transition season between front office regimes, but they are also hovering close to contention. Despite the lack of investment in the roster, the club has gone 47-42. That puts them just half a game back of a playoff spot, as of this writing.
Taken all together, it would be fair to wonder about the bottom line. Even with the winning record, would ownership want to invest in a club when they were trying to cut the budget just a few months ago? Nothing is confirmed and Mozeliak suggests some conversations still need to be had, but he has been with the club for decades and presumably has a decent feel for the room in St. Louis. He adds that he has not been told to trim payroll.
It’s possible that the next few weeks will be key for the Cards. If they stay in the race through the end of the month, buying will be more likely. If they fall a few games back, the odds of selling should increase.
They could also do a bit of both, as Goold lays out. He mentions that the club believes in Michael McGreevy and wants to give him a shot in the rotation, but he doesn’t currently have a spot. The starting staff currently consists of Gray, Mikolas, Fedde, Andre Pallante and Matthew Liberatore. Perhaps a trade of someone in that group could be used to open a spot for McGreevy while the club simultaneously adds elsewhere.
Fedde would be the most likely candidate to go as an impending free agent. As mentioned, Gray and Mikolas have no-trade protection while Pallante and Liberatore can be cheaply controlled for years to come. They also have Helsley, Maton and Steven Matz as impending free agents in the bullpen. Perhaps the Cards would consider flipping someone from that group while still hoping to have an effective bullpen overall. If other clubs are interested, the Cards will seemingly pick up the phone.
“Trying to understand what someone may want to give you for something is probably worth hearing or at least listening,” Mozeliak said. “You can always say no. The mindset of us going in is to remain open-minded.”
For now, it’s all still speculative. Much could change in the coming weeks. The club’s wins and losses will be a factor while player health could also be a key factor. “I do feel like when you look at where we are that week leading up, the 72 hours leading up to the trade deadline, that may affect how we make our decisions,” Mozeliak said. He added that he and Bloom will both be involved in the deadline decision making as part of a collaborative process. “I hope we have really hard decisions to make come July 31 because that means we’re playing well.”
Photo courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski, Imagn Images